Re: RE : VC++6.0 and 7.0 are not supported anymore from ROOT4-04-2 or newer

Hi Nick!

On May 13, 2005, at 9:52 AM, Nick van Eijndhoven wrote:

> Hi Wim, Rene and others,
> Here some viewpoint of a bit older person :).
> The danger is (and has always been) that when one introduces new
> language features, one may clash with older compiler versions
> which don't (yet) support the new features.
> I grew up with Fortran (even with paper tapes and punch cards)
> in the bubble chamber era at CERN and I am still happy that we
> decided to use only standard Fortran features as they were outlined
> in the ANSI standard which were seen to be supported on all platforms
> in the various collaborations at the time when setting up the code.
> Lateron of course several language extensions appeared, but most
> of them were not really needed, so we decided to prefer the platform
> portability above these new sexy language features and stick
> with our standard. The result was that we could always run our
> programs without any problems.
>

This standards-based portability approach is exactly what this thread is about (unless I misunderstood someone). The point was that ROOT slowly is embracing the current ANSI C++ standard, which obviously looks hazardous to some people. If I'm not mistaken, the standard has been around now for 10 years, so it doesn't look overhasty to me to use it.

> To my opinion I see now history repeating itself.
> As far as I can judge from the various mails, the main reason
> why one would like to allow the new C++ features is the possibility
> to implement things like the boost libs etc... into ROOT.
> Well, I think it is generally known that the boost code started off
> from using non-standard C++ features and now some of the "boost people"
> try to sell these new features to the C++ ISO committee.
> My opinion would be to give more weight to the platform portability
> of ROOT than to introducing this new (e.g. boost) stuff.
> In case people would like to have additional packages available,
> I would say, let them then take care of updating their compiler
> and create the corresponding libs themselves. If one sticks with the
> ROOT code to the current C++ standard, it will also compile on
> newer compiler versions, whereas the reverse will in general not
> be the case and will introduce enormous problems for large
> collaborations
> in which one wants to have a stable analysis environment.
>

I'm not familiar with boost, could you elaborate on the "new features" or give a pointer?

Ciao,

                                        Roland

--
Real Programmers consider "what you see is what you get" to be just as
bad a concept in Text Editors as it is in women. No, the Real Programmer
wants a "you asked for it, you got it" text editor -- complicated,
cryptic, powerful, unforgiving, dangerous.
-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
Version: 3.12
GS/CS/M/MU d-(++) s:+ a-> C+++ UL++++ P-(+) L+++ E(+) W+ !N K- w--- M+ 
!V Y+
PGP++ t+(++) 5 R+ tv-- b+ DI++ e+++>++++ h---- y+++
------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------







application/pgp-signature attachment: This is a digitally signed message part